Maryland Commission Examining Pros & Cons Of Fracking

America’s shale energy revolution has arrived according to a recent study by the chief economist for API which has been studying the controversial issue for sometime. In Maryland, a commission is currently examining the pro’s and con’s of drilling for natural gas in Marcellus Shale deposits via the fracking method. Despite some environmental concerns, John Felmy, a spokesman for API, says that fracking is not a new technology- that it has been proven safe- and has proven to be an economic game-changer in America. He tells WCBC News that fracking is putting hundreds of thousands of people to work, driving down energy and raw material costs for manufacturers, reducing consumer home heating and electricity costs, and sending billions in additional revenue to government…

Are we really surprised to hear from Industry-sponsored studies that fracking will be good for Mountain Maryland? If fracking is sending billions in revenue to governments, why did API lobby so hard to kill a reasonable severance tax in Maryland’s legislature this year? The state will see only minimal revenue from these commercial extraction experiments (injecting toxic chemicals underground at high pressure IS a new technology and has most certainly NOT been proven safe) if the industry has its way. Do you really believe fracking will be an economic game-changer in Maryland? Whetzel County is the most heavily-fracked county in the state of WV; it also has the state’s highest unemployment rate (11.9% in Dec. 2011). The industry uses a finite number of drilling rigs. Do we really think drillers will throw workers (many from TX, OK, ND) off the payroll to hire a bunch of Marylanders when it brings a rig over the border?